


The Great Uppercross Bake Off

by Ankaret



Category: Great British Bake Off RPF, Persuasion - Jane Austen
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2014-11-04
Packaged: 2018-02-24 03:03:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2565953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ankaret/pseuds/Ankaret
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a very special year for the Great British Bake Off.  In a salute to the Royal Navy, all the contestants are characters from Persuasion.  Cake quakes, misjudgment and marzipan-related evildoing ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Great Uppercross Bake Off

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mistresscurvy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistresscurvy/gifts).



> I saw that you requested Persuasion in a previous year, so I wrote you this treat. :)

### Week One

Mel and Sue are sitting outside in the sunshine, with a billowing marquee tent behind them. This year, there is something different about the shape of the tent. It looks less like a giant, deliciously geometric meringue, and more like… sails.

"There's a smell of pastry in the air," says Sue, who is sitting jauntily aboard a large brass cannon looking out over the sea.

"There's the sound of Paul Hollywood singing 'Keep Young And Beautiful' as he applies his hair gel," agrees Mel, who is perched on a low stone wall with the salty breeze ruffling her hair.

"There's… seagulls?" says Sue, looking perplexed.

"That can mean only one thing," declares Mel. "It's a very special year in the Bake Off tent."

"And outside it," says Sue, waving her arm so enthusiastically at the ships in the bay that she nearly falls off the cannon.

The two women beam at the camera. "Welcome," they say in cheery not-quite-unison, "to The Great British Bake Off Salutes The Royal Navy!"

The camera begins to pan away. "Does that mean we get flaky pastry cannons to salute them with?" Sue asks Mel in an undertone. "Or maybe crème patt rifles? I could go for a crème patt rifle."

"I've often seen you going for a quick rifle in the contestants' crème patt, Sue," agrees Mel as the music swoops to a crescendo and the camera pans dramatically across the rows of empty pastel baking stations inside the tent.

### Week Three

"Mary needs to buck her ideas up," says Mary Berry, raising a perfectly flaky and golden lemon tray bake finger to her lips.

Paul Hollywood twinkles at her. "That's the first time I've heard _that_ said in this tent, Mary."

Mary looks pensive yet certain, an expression which, if it could be mobilised against the French, would be worth a dozen battleships. "I mean Mary Musgrove, the contestant, as you very well know. I noticed that Charles made the three kinds of fruit jam she included in her tray bakes, and she got Anne to do the decoration because she said she was too tired."

"Well, she couldn't get childcare," says Paul, who is playing devil's advocate here.

"Nonsense. Mel and Sue have been looking after those little hooligans all weekend." Mary cocks her perfectly coiffed blonde head to one side as a childish wail pierces the air. "Oh, dear. I believe that's a soggy bottom."

### Week Four

"You can do it! You can blooming well do it, Louisa! I believe in you!" Mel encourages the youngest contestant by doing a little cheerleader routine along the side of the baking stations. "Two, four, six, eight! Who knows how to laminate?"

Louisa Musgrove lifts yet another tier of intricately folded dough onto her already towering Showstopper. From the back of the room her sister Henrietta (who settled for a less difficult – but also, possibly less showstopping – pile of choux buns in the shape of Lyme Regis) watches with a mixture of sisterly concern and sisterly annoyance.

Sue darts over and adopts a staying-out-of-the-picture crouch, clutching an imaginary microphone. "And we haven't seen anything like this since Meat Week of Series Three, when Lydia served up a rough puff pie in the shape of a whole roast officer! Louisa is going for it – this could be the big one - "

Louisa's tongue pokes out of the side of her mouth. The final tier wobbles in her sweaty fingers. Captain Benwick draws in his breath in a near-silent whistle.

Louisa's foot slips. She stumbles against the baking station. Her final tier starts to slide out of her hands. Worse yet, she has knocked the body of the cake from its foundations, and it begins to topple.

Mel puts a desperate hand out to steady the cake. Captain Wentworth leaves his caramel to burn in the pan without a second thought, and dives across the room in a noble and desperate attempt to catch the final layer as it falls. He only succeeds in catching Louisa moments before she dives face-first into the wreck of her Showstopper. The final tier breaks over Sue's flippantly quiffed head in a rain of pastry.

Louisa flings herself into Captain Wentworth's arms in a flood of passionate tears. Her sister Henrietta starts snuffling in sympathy. The caramel boils over and covers Captain Wentworth's stove in nasty brown goo.

Mel wipes some crumbs off Sue's cheek with one delicate finger and takes a sneaky taste. "You could still make up the difference on flavour…" she begins hopefully, and then realises she isn't helping. 

Over in the corner, Mrs Clay doesn't bother looking up. She is intent on her task of building a Roman Bath out of millionaire's shortbread and decorating it with flattering chocolate statuary of actual millionaires and other local dignitaries.

Anne has a headache.

### Week Seven

"And I'm pleased to announce that our Star Baker, for the second week running, is Mr William Elliot!" announces Mel through gritted teeth. "The judges weren't quite sure about your choice of Signature Bake – they thought the flavours weren't quite authentic, and the base was rather shallow – but you pulled it back in the Technical, and your Showstopper was quite superb."

"I used an old family recipe," says Mr Elliot smugly. "I added a few twists of my own, of course, to give it a bit of a lift."

He hugs Mrs Clay, who is on one side of him, and then attempts to hug Anne Elliot, on the other. Anne shunts her stool away before the hug can connect. Her expression is civil but quite unshakeable.

Sue steps forward. "So you know what this means. I have the sad job of telling you which baker isn't going forward to join us next week." Her gaze pans down the row of floury aprons and tensely wistful faces. "I'm very sorry. It's Lady Russell."

Mel and Sue enfold Lady Russell in a hug. She looks utterly bewildered.

"But I was _right_ to combine lavender, blackberry and ground coffee beans in my Signature," she assures the judges.

Paul Hollywood shakes his head decidedly. "I didn't like it."

"Well," says Lady Russell, managing a twinkle in her eye despite being obviously banjaxed by the situation, "luckily I am a widow of means, and can therefore decide my own tastes without taking yours or those of any other gentleman into consideration."

Paul responds with an answering twinkle and a bow of the head, which he finishes off with a flick-of-the-hand salute.

Lady Russell hugs Mary Berry with considerably more warmth than she did Mel and Sue. "I don't envy you, my dear – the only grown-up left in the tent!"

Mel and Sue look at one another, wondering whether they should pretend to take offence at this, and then grin and decide it isn't worth it.

"I think you underestimate Anne," says Mary Berry, with that steely gentleness in her voice which she usually reserves for people who try to crack their eggs with one hand and end up getting egg-white all down the outside of the bowl.

"Yes," agrees Lady Russell, looking down the line of contestants as if with new eyes. "Anne."

### Semi-Final Week

Mel and Sue are hiding outside the tent from the drama within. You can tell they are hiding, because Sue is wrapped in the tent-flap like a bespectacled samosa, whereas Mel is holding up a small leafy twig in front of her face by way of camouflage.

"Well," sighs Mel dramatically. "We haven't seen anything like that in a semi-final before, have we? Sir Walter Elliot certainly burned his boats. Not to mention his baked amaretto-banoffee cheesecake."

"It's been an exciting old series," mused Sue. "First there was Anne's big slip-up in Week Two. I wasn't sure she was going to recover from that, to be honest. She should have stuck to her guns and not changed her recipe half way. And then there was a long stretch when we all thought the only flavour she was capable of getting right was gooseberry. And yet here she is, going through to the Final."

"She's just got stronger and stronger," agrees Mel. "Then there was Charles, who produced a field sports-themed cake every week until Paul and Mary got tired of it somewhere around his cream and raspberry hunting horns."

"Don't forget Week Four," says Sue solemnly, "which brought us…"

"CAKE QUAKE!" they both intone, and wobble to and fro dramatically waving their arms up and down. Mel loses her twig to a gust of wind and has to chase off after it. It is returned to her by a rather bemused midshipman. Sue, meanwhile, takes a handful of white chocolate curls embossed with quotations from Burke's Peerage out of her pocket and starts nibbling on them with a distracted expression.

Sue cocks a nervous ear towards the tent. Mary Berry can be heard in low conversation with the producers. Paul has stomped off to his tent like a bull hippopotamus whose claim to his watering hole has been challenged by an annoyingly well-preserved ibex.

"Imagine Sir Walter completely losing it like that just because Paul criticised his choice to make a giant cake in the shape of his own face for the theme 'What Inspires Me'," reminisces Mel. "I can't believe those personal remarks he was making."

"Yeah," says Sue. She wraps her arms around her knees as she stares into the middle distance. "When he said _you, sir, are nothing but a great north-country flour-heaver, and while I allow you a fine pair of blue eyes, the shocking ruin of your complexion makes them look like nothing so much as two duck eggs atop a raspberry crumble - "_

"He did say that if Paul wanted to rent his house he'd consider it, mind you," says Mel, and steals a white chocolate curl out of Sue's pocket.

### Final Week

Mary Berry contemplates Mr Elliot's final Showstopper. She could not have mustered more distaste if he had plunked a dead sewer rat among his white wine and ginger sachertorte roulades.

" _Bought_ marzipan, Mr Elliot?" she says, shaking her head from side to side. "How could you?"

"I did not buy it!" blusters Mr Elliot.

"You _shoplifted_ it?" says Mel, adding fuel to the fire. Mel has not liked Mr Elliot ever since she heard him making sneering remarks about Sue's sexual orientation in Week Three. No one disses Sue when Mel is around.

"I neither bought nor shoplifted it! If you must know, Penelope made it! We thought – well, I thought that since she was out of the running, there could be no objection to a team effort - " 

"This does taste like Mrs Clay's marzipan," says Paul, leaning menacingly over the table. "And I'll tell you something else, she and this marzipan both deserve better than you."

* * *

Arm in arm, Anne and Captain Wentworth wander through the happy picnicking throng, pausing to exchange smiles with former contestants and photo opportunities with happy fans.

"Never mind Paul and Mary's judging," says Anne, squeezing Captain Wentworth's arm. "I believe _we_ judged right at last."

Captain Wentworth shifts his runner-up's bouquet to the crook of his arm. He reaches over to steal a petit four from a nearby tray, and tenderly pops it into Anne's mouth. "Yes," he says. "I believe we did."


End file.
